The Surprising Miss Molly Hooper
by lavonnallama
Summary: The last person Sherlock expected to surprise him was Molly Hooper, but perhaps she'd learned something about herself lately that would make her just a shade more interesting. Set after "His Last Vow." Spoilerish. A short scene that I had to write and my first Sherlock piece.


Sherlock was not expecting her, and it was perhaps that more than the look in her eye, that shocked him. He was not a man given to surprises, in fact, he could have counted the number of things that had succeeded in taking him unawares on his fingers alone, and as she stood there in the doorway of his bedroom, he did so, quickly and quietly in that part of his mind where every deduction was made and every risk calculated.

"Having a lie in, Sherlock?"

"Trying," he said, letting his eyes shut and leaning back against the stack of pillows he'd piled beneath him. In point of fact he hadn't been sleeping at all, but he found that when he actually took the time to explain what he was doing at any given moment, people's eyes tended to glaze over, and as Molly Hooper was finally doing something interesting, he thought he'd better not distract her.

"I doubt it," she said, dropping the book bag slung over her shoulder onto the carpeted floor and leaning down to dig through it.

He opened his eyes and automatically began cataloguing what he saw and filing it away, his lips twitching into a small smile for a moment when he realized, four full seconds before she pulled out the first instrument, what she had brought.

"I haven't the time, Molly, or do you think _Moriarty _will be kind enough to shoot himself in the head again for me this go round?"

"I hear you're a fair hand at shooting people in the head yourself now," she shot back, "I can't imagine you'd need his help. Now a sample, if you please." She was holding up a little plastic cup in one hand, offering it to him with an eyebrow quirked and her mouth in a line that was almost , _almost_ unreadable.

"One man hardly constitutes practice."

"Sherlock."

"If you imagine I'm going to debase myself by urinating for you a second time, you're sadly mistaken."

"I don't imagine anything, well, anything to do with you urinating."

It was Sherlock's turn to raise an eyebrow now, and there it was again, that look in her eye he hadn't seen before, what _was_ it?

"What _do_ you imagine, Molly, now that you're darling fiance has realized he was merely a stand in for the man you truly desire and left you to pine?"

"Lately? I wouldn't want to scandalize you." Sherlock scoffed and sat up straighter in bed, his bedsheets sliding down to settle around his waist and leave his torso bare. He could see Molly swallow from across the room and he smiled.

"As if you could. You're transparent, almost as much so as the day I met you, though I'll admit you seem to have found your spine."

"A sample," she repeated, taking six steps to stand beside him and shove the cup under his nose. "Mycroft was very clear that you're to be tested weekly as part of your—" Mycroft, that ridiculous ass. Of course he would include some humiliating footnote to a sentence of public service and forget to inform the wayward little brother who had had the temerity to be such a fraternal disgrace.

He sighed and watched Molly as she spoke, tuning out and wondering instead when exactly she'd changed her perfume, because the subtle scent of Burberry was far more pleasant that whatever god awful budget brand she'd been wearing before. Perhaps a gift from her ex, though he doubted it. What woman continued to wear a perfume given to her by an old lover? A desperate one perhaps, though Molly didn't seem heart broken to him, not the way she held herself and spoke to him—

A sharp stinging in his cheek and a dull throb beneath it accompanied a loud crack as Molly Hooper slapped him.

He met her eye as she raised her hand again and before she could move it more than a few inches he had twisted his own hand about her wrist and yanked her down, leaning forward simultaneously until they were eye to eye. Her pupils were wide and her pulse quick beneath his fingers as he stared at her in curiosity. Fascinating.

"What do you think you're doing?" He asked.

"Getting your attention," she said, looking for all the world as if she had just enjoyed slapping him and was considering another go. He was reminded forcibly of The Woman.

_I could cut myself slapping that face._

And oddly, without warning or reason, Sherlock felt his own pulse begin to quicken.

"Developed a new hobby, have we?" he asked, voice low and quick as he continued to monitor Molly's pulse beneath his finger tips, yanking her just a bit closer so that he could better observe her color and breath, "Thought you'd try your hand at dominatrix after roughing me up at the lab?"

This time Molly's eyes widened and her nostrils flared.

"Don't be sick," she said, "Just because you enjoy that sort of thing doesn't mean we all do."

"Fascinating how deeply rooted a puritanical upbringing can leave someone in a boring and unfulfilling sexual rut," he mused, his hand crushing down just a bit more tightly on Molly's wrist as her breath caught and he noticed a shiver run down her back. "Do yourself a favor and try to make up your own mind about what you find arousing in your next relationship," he said, "perhaps then you'll be able to interest your lover long enough to get him to the alter."

"Tom was plenty interested. And you're wrong."

"Excuse me?" said Sherlock, incredulous. "Wrong about what exactly?"

"I broke it off, not Tom."

Now _that_ was a surprise.

"You didn't."

"I did."

"You ought to know by now not to lie to me, Molly. I've already found you out."

"Go on then, explain your logic to me, because no matter what you've deduced, I told Tom I couldn't marry him, not the other way round."

And he went through his catalogues of Molly after the break up. Her hair, her clothes, the way she avoided the topic… none of them indicators of a woman who had just ended a relationship she had wanted out of. What then, what hadn't he seen? Clearly she had missed the man once he'd gone, mourned the relationship, been sensitive to the topic… Unless— _you're an idiot, Sherlock Holmes—_ unless she wasn't mourning the end of her relationship but of the relationship she had been trying to attain by proxy. The man she'd wanted Tom to be.

"I see," he said, realizing belatedly the meaning of it all and wondering how he could be so consistently dense where Molly Hooper's affection for him was concerned.

He let go of her as she gasped, swinging himself out of bed, wrapping the sheet around his waist more to preserve her modesty than his as he snatched the cup from her other hand and made his way towards the water closet.

He paused in the doorway, looking back at her briefly as he spoke.

"I was right about one thing though."

"What's that?" Molly asked, folding her arms and staring at him with that same look she'd had when she'd first come in, an expression he could now accurately identify as challenging.

"You enjoyed hitting me."

She scoffed. "Who doesn't enjoy that?"

"You know what I mean," he said, raising his brows and feeling satisfied as she blushed before he disappeared behind the door.


End file.
